Site Shops

SteveL, you have as much chance of platting fog as prices being reduced.🤔.

 ....  As I said earlier some 30 colleagues this year are asking for feedback on the 30 sites with no shop this year and the negative feedback has been minimal.

Hardly the definitive survey then! People - in general- are only just getting their caravans & motorhomes back on the road after the winter. 

You are making generalised disparaging personal comments about genuine contributors to the forum. There are no "browbeaters" on here and people are just questioning what has happened and why it has happened. It is a CAMC matter not about any individual action but I must say I have now learnt quite a bit how these things are managed by CAMC.

It might have been widespread but not universal. I guess in the past the running of a shop was very much down to those members who had became wardens for whatever reasons, in a very different era, to organise and stock in their own time. It never was a job expectation, a contractual obligation, just an aside run voluntarily. I remember those whistling milkmen who delivered doorstep milk across every UK town. Times change and the world moves on. Unless the club officially run these site shops then who are we to question what essentially has become a wholly voluntary act, one where responsibility falls squarely on the staff’s shoulders? If the membership want shops I guess the club must evaluate, address the legalities, staff and then remunerate those running them according. That is the time we now live in, not yesteryear.
Yes, there are now a ‘couple’ of club sites which do have site shops run by properly employed persons but size and occupancy of site must determine the economics and validity I would think. I’d reckon for many sites the economics just won’t add up.

I think the demographic of club membership (or at least club site users) must have changed a lot since we gave up 3 years ago! If I was a warden/site manager reading some comments on this, and other threads, I'd be very tempted to say "s*d the lot of you, there's easier ways of earning a meagre living"! 

What I fail to understand is, on one hand, the howls of anguish about the loss of "basic, no facility" sites alongside complaints about now having to make the effort to get off site and buy basics at local businesses who are probably desperate for the trade!

No pleasing some folk!  

Sounds great, DD, and an ideal candidate for addition to the "small private sites" thread which has done so much to publicise and promote non club sites! 👍

Fortunately moulesy life in the real world on sites is really nothing like this and other forums. Unbeknown to them but I've met a couple of the regular critics on this forum and strangely they're nothing like what they portray on here. Give someone a keyboard

JK

Moulesy a good thing has come out of this thread, the fact that CAMC have altered the site details information and explained how site shops are organised. They haven't expanded the details further and are still listing what is on offer on individual sites eg milk, bread etc so it's unclear what members might expect to find especially now that this provision has stopped on certain sites. Hence the OP and myself mentioning a couple of reviewers noting these changes and we now know a bit more about the background to them. We hoped the club would communicate this but it's  now left to "reading the small print" and understanding this may be out of date.

Some of the sites continue to support local businesses buying in bakery products etc.  No bad thing either.

And a note to Micky, you can still get your milk delivered, we get ours delivered in glass bottles just like in days of yore. Cuts down on plastics too. 

Make of all this what you will but I expect there'll be a few more reviews in a similar vein because the changes have not been relayed to the membership.

To be honest coming under attack on this thread for asking about a fairly basic communication omission between the club and the membership hasn't been much fun.

So I'm leaving this conversation having understood a lot more of the process involved.  

I’m all for it, glass bottles that is! But the milkmen of old are very few and far between these days. The paperboy of old too, or should that be paperperson☹️, also is a dying breed. If both were to cut down on food mileage and ‘paper’ mileage’ I would be supportive of them too. I wonder if the likes of Tesco deliveries help the green challenge? I’m sure site shops did help us members in general and I’m sad to see their demise but that’s the way of our modern world I think. And who is to blame, well I guess it’s our generation that has wished and allowed our way into the modern world, it’s often called progress.

For shops to return I’m sure things will have to change. Problems is that change may mean more expensive pitch fees.

Sometimes, but hopefully only sometimes, businesses can find advantage over others by covertly or otherwise circumnavigating legal requirements and ethical behaviours. Now I’m not suggesting or casting doubt or pointing fingers here but, you are right, any company worth its salt needs to keep an eye on competitors in order to question their own behaviours. Sometimes to copy and at other times definitely not! The grass is not always what it seems, not always correct and is not always ‘greener’ (in every sense of the word)!